Category Archives for Crime

FBI Director James Comey told his bureau he broke with custom in alerting lawmakers that the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was being reopened because of its political sensitivity.

In an internal memo obtained by Fox News, the beleaguered director noted that the FBI typically would not communicate with the public when reopening a case, according to a Department of Justice source. But Comey said he had to in this case because Clinton is seeking the White House in an election on Nov. 8.

“Of course we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Comey wrote. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record

Comey and his Bureau, of course, have spent the last year going through political hell as they investigated Clinton. He’s catching flak from both sides of the aisle. There is absolutely no reason that he wants to go through this again. Imagine being the poor agent who had to sit down in Comey’s office (just yesterday, according to reports) and convince him to reopen the case. A little empathy informs us the conversation probably went something like this:

Comey: Son, you’d better have something damn good, because there’s no way I’m reopening that case for anything less.

Agent: Well, sir… we have this.

Reopening this investigation ten days before the election is going to be seen as political by every side. And Comey knows Hillary personally. He’ll know perfectly well that her reputation for viciousness and holding a grudge is well earned. If Hillary wins on November 8th and Comey has nothing substantial, he’s toast. He’s not an idiot – he knows this.

Which means there’s no way he reopened this investigation unless he had something real, and something important.

One thing we take for granted in the modern first world is freedom from bandits. In the US and western Europe, they’re simply not a thing.

This is a huge historical anomaly. We are, of course, familiar with the idea of bandits from watching westerns. But bandits weren’t just an artifact of the wild west. Throughout most of human history, bandits have been the norm, not the exception. Bandits arise whenever a few simple conditions are met.

People travel long distances, out of easy reach of population centers.

The average traveler is defenseless.

Law and order decays, law enforcement becomes lax, or bandits develop an easy way to avoid reprisal.

We very seldom even talk about bandits in the modern world. Yet the contribution our bandit-free culture gives to our culture is enormous. The economy benefits thanks to a reduction in deadweight loss. The people benefit when they don’t live in constant fear. People work harder when they can hold onto their earnings, and they travel farther for trade when the risks are lower.

The benefits are massive.

Unfortunately, our days of being outlaw free may be coming to a close. The news media, and even the “alt news” media, is treating the recent Calais attacks as a migrant issue. They are not entirely wrong. But they’re also missing a huge issue, because what we’re witnessing is the return of banditry to western civilization.

This is bad. It’s really bad.

It’s begun as a migrant issue. We’ve allowed in immigrants from areas of the world where banditry is common. They’ve brought the practice with them. At the same time, law enforcement has gone lax – especially against certain subgroups. When individual law enforcement agents have more to fear from appearing “racist” than they do from allowing bandits to run wild, well, you get more bandits.

But the real problem runs far deeper. If we allow this new wave of banditry to continue unchecked, before long the local ruffians will join in. “Bad boys” aren’t limited to the migrants, you know. Every culture has its share. And the locals will bring better organization, logistics, and armament to the game. Why? Not because westerners are inherently superior at these things. It will be because the locals won’t be migrants who have left everything they own behind to move to a foreign land. They will have friends, family, and support networks. They will have wealth, built over generations. And they will know the land of their fathers inside and out.

Banditry begets more banditry. We must crush it ruthlessly in the gestational phase. The Romans learned this lesson the hard way. The British learned it the hard way. The nations of the west sure seem about to learn it again – the hard way.

The time has long passed to indict Hillary Clinton. From that bastion of conservative media fondly known as CNN:

Two government agencies flagged emails on Clinton’s server as containing classified information, the inspector general said, including some on “special access programs,” which are above “top secret” in classification level.

Quite a few people out there have no idea what “special access program” actually means – as evidence by the fact that even CNN gets it wrong in the quote above. There is no level of classification that is above Top Secret. However, within Top Secret, there are extra levels of security that are sometimes applied. Special Access Programs are one of those.

Anything classified Top Secret is handled with a lot of care to begin with. First, just because you’ve passed the grueling background check to earn a Top Secret level clearance doesn’t mean you can get access to anything you want that’s labeled Top Secret. You still have to demonstrate that you have what they call “need to know.” For anything classified as “Secret” this is relatively easy to do (assuming you have a Secret level clearance). For anything classified “Top Secret” it’s actually kind of hard. You have to show not just that you have “need to know” for the program in general, but that you “need to know” that specific piece of information. And you have to truly demonstrate it. Top Secret is already locked down pretty well.

Special Access Programs (SAPs) are even a level beyond that. First, you have to have that Top Secret Clearance. Then you have to be one of the people on the very short list that has been approved for the program (hence the name – special access). It’s not uncommon for that list to be only a couple of dozen people in the country, and on occasion that list might number in the low single digits. Records kept on the topic are sometimes sparse, detailing only what actually has to be recorded for the program. Very often, people who aren’t on the approved list won’t even know that the program exists.

To protect intelligence sources, often even the President isn’t briefed on the fine details of these programs – and sometimes isn’t even told of them.

The penalty for revealing classified information is up to ten years in jail – and revealing SAP information would be enough to qualify for the maximum sentence if any of us mere mortals did it. Just based on what we currently know to be true, any normal civilian with a security clearance would already be in prison, and they’d have thrown away the key. Secretary Clinton is not a target because she’s a politician – that’s the only reason she’s been protected so far.

The failure to indict Hillary is proof that law and order in the US no longer apply. If you’re a big enough fish, you can break the law at will. I say that this is unacceptable. Law and order must apply to all.